1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image inspection apparatus and an image inspection method which are capable of removing a noise as a non-detection object from a multi-valued image acquired by picking up an image in an inspection object region, to inspect the presence or absence of a defect such as a scratch or a dirt, a size, a shape, and the like of a blob form as a detection object, and a computer program capable of executing each processing process of the image inspection method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional example, an image data processing apparatus has been proposed in which acquired multi-valued image data is binarized by one threshold and an image data after binarization is subjected to labeling processing, to remove as a noise a labeling-processed figure having the number of pixel not satisfying a prescribed number of pixels so that even a noise having a high luminance value can be removed in a case of the figure having a small area (refer to, e.g., Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 06-083953). Hereinafter, an object wished to be ultimately detected is referred to as a detection object, and an object wished to be removed as a noise is referred to as a non-detection object.